Unemployed rally in Chicago after elections

The Chicago Unemployed Workers Council, a project of Chicago Jobs with Justice, staged a jobs demonstration last Friday to coincide with the release of unemployed figures for October. Susan Hurley, Chicago director of JwJ, asked the crowd that since Mark Kirk, newly elected Republican Senator from Illinois, is about to go to work, when will the unemployed go back to work? She pointed out that the private sector isn’t putting people to work, so the government must.

Janet Edberg, a member of the Bridgeport Unemployed Action Center and unemployed for over two years, said that she had worked and paid into unemployment for 32 years and demanded that unemployment be extended to cover the long term unemployed. Millions are in danger of losing their benefits if Congress doesn’t act quickly to restore funding and a 5th tier of benefits.

CONTRIBUTOR

Scott Marshall is chair of the Communist Party's Labor Commission. Scott grew up in Virginia where he first became active in the civil rights movement in high school, working on voter registration and anti-Klan projects in rural Southern Virginia and Tennessee. He was also active against the war in Vietnam.
Scott has been a life long trade unionist and was active in rank and file reform movements in the Teamsters, Machinists and Steelworkers unions in the 1970s and '80s. He was co-chair of the Save Our Jobs committee of USWA local 1834 at Pullman Standard in Chicago and active in nationwide organizing against plant shutdowns and layoffs. He was a founder of the unemployed organization Jobs or Income Now (Join), in Chicago, and the National Congress of Unemployed Organizations in the 1980s.
Scott remains active in SOAR (Steelworkers Active Organized Retirees). He lives in Chicago.